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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
President Trump is fulfilling his promise to remove the burden of intrusive EPA climate regulation on the US economy. But even more drastic action to curtail EPA activities is in the pipeline.
U.S. EPA staff told to prepare for Trump executive orders: sources
By David Shepardson, Timothy Gardner and Richard Valdmanis | WASHINGTON
Staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have been told that President Donald Trump is preparing a handful of executive orders to reshape the agency, to be signed once a new administrator is confirmed, two sources who attended the meeting told Reuters on Wednesday.
A senior EPA official who had been briefed by members of the Trump administration mentioned the executive orders at a meeting of staffers in the EPA’s Office of General Counsel on Tuesday, but did not provide details about what the orders would say, said the sources, who asked not to be named.
“It was just a heads-up to expect some executive orders, that’s it,” one of the sources said.
…
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-epa-idUSKBN15U2MW
EPA officials might not have much time to comply with the new rules, because of a bill which has just been introduced to Congress.
H.R.861 – To terminate the Environmental Protection Agency.
02/03/2017 Referred to House Science, Space, and Technology
Read more: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/861
The new EPA abolition bill is at a very early stage, and has to cross a number of hurdles before making it to the desk of President Trump. But returning power and responsibility for clean air and water to the states, reducing federal interference in everyday affairs, is likely to be a very attractive proposition for President Trump and his supporters.
Unfortunately, the best approach is probably to assume that you only have four years, and ask the question “What actions will take the longest to reverse, assuming an antithetical administration in four years time?”
The majorities needed in government are just not there for the root-and-branch reform of the EPA mandates. So the next best thing is probably the sledge-hammer approach to the corrupt bureaucratic edifice. That means job losses. Lots of them.
The pace and actions of Trump is breathtaking! I am impressed. If he succeeds, it may spell the doom of politicians of ever gaining the oval office. As regardless of persuasion, the voters will demand a businessman from their side be the next candidate.
And that is why every career politician on both sides are throwing roadblocks in his way. Very few have fall back skills or positions other than overpaid consultants to other career politicians. A good first step is to repeal the 17th Amendment.
Repeal of the 17th is good. But it is not going to get real people into the senate as the politicians from the states would still be picking the senate.
Pollution crosses state boundaries and leaving its regulation up to individual states is a problem. Total abolition of the EPA will just return us to the situation before its creation where upwind states don’t care about what happens downwind. I agree the EPA has long abandoned its usefulness and descended into tyrannical behavior. The one place it’s useful is for protecting those downwind from upwind abusers. The redesign of EPA should not abandon that principle.
Gary,
Form the EPA from a conference of state EPAs. With decisions requiring a certain level of consensus. Any contentious issues can then be passed to Congress for Federal arbitration. The EPA as it exists has outlived its usefulness and become instead a political enforcement body.
Seriously?
Here’s the full text of the bill:
“The Environmental Protection Agency shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”
No transfer of duties; no thought to how the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act or any other duties of the EPA will be administered. Just “terminate” it.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/861
This is not the way to do this.
Here’s a thought for the new administration. The Federal government owns 640 million acres. If you sell off half that land you could pay down most, (if not all), of the federal deficit. This would also be a boondoggle for the western states. Currently they get no tax revenue on Federal lands. If half is converted to private land, the extra tax revenue would be huge.
IMO all federal land except for national parks, (some) military and Indian reservations should be sold and/or turned over to the states. Maybe also the highest parts of mountain ranges, above the timberline.
The West has been a colony of DC long enough.
I would let them keep the land that federal office buildings sit on. Maybe a foot or two more.
I compare the EPA to Kudzu. It was brought into the us as a plant
to control erosion, which it does, but then it went very much beyond
the original plan and is now slowly consuming the southern US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu_in_the_United_States
Kudzu can be cut back to it’s roots, but Its roots can be 25 feet
deep. Very hard to kill.
So would be any residual EPA. Bush the younger allowed
his EPA to declare CO2 a pollutant.
The Bushes are Globalist. The EPA is a political arm of Globalism.
Eliminating the EPA is just plain stupid….idiotic….moronic…ill-considered….counter-productive….etc.
Nothing wrong with a federal EPA that helps the States achieve reasonable goals to protect our natural environment, to restore it where necessary, for the use and enjoyment of the people of the United States.
It is a run-away activist EPA in collusion with eco-terrorists groups that puts its agenda ahead of the good of the nation and the people that needs to be reined in and brought under control — and illegal, unconstitutional regulations repealed, such as the waterways act.
The Inspector general or the US Attorney General needs to investigate the EPA for the long-standing practices of “sue and settle” which it has used to gain powers not granted to it under law.
Kip, I would agree with you if I thought that Patriots would always
be in charge of the US government, but the Socialists might be reelected
sometime in the future. I believe that their attempt to kill
Capitalism would be very much harder if there were no EPA.
Jerry ==> I am much more worried about the misanthropes — the anti-humanity eco-nuts — than all the other “-ists” put together.
Kip,
You don’t trim back weeds, you pull them out by the roots. And then you plant nice flowers.
My plan/idea:
Get rid of the EPA and replace it with a environmental advisory board or panel appointed by the President and approved by Congress. The panel would consist of environmentalists and scientists from various fields related to environmental protection and human health. The board would make recommendations for new environmental regulations or laws (or rolling back/eliminating existing ones) to Congress who would then decide whether to approve the recommendation. If passed, the legislation would go to the President to be signed into law. Congress would be required to have hearings on the matter and apply cost/benefit analysis to all recommendations for new laws or regulations from the board before voting on them. The hearings of course could include scientists and environmentalists from the board as well as from the private sector.
The states would enforce the federal environmental laws and regulations. An individual or group of individuals (maybe the advisory board) from the federal level would oversee and monitor the states’ enforcement of federal regulations and laws to ensure uniform compliance.
This way, the radical greenies’ political influence at what is now the EPA is greatly diminished in my opinion. It would be much harder for them to call the shots with Congress and the President deciding the matter. This process is probably going to be slower and more bureaucratic than the current process at the EPA, but that’s life in Washington.
I don’t know, but maybe there are holes in this idea and problems with it that I’m not noticing. At any rate, I welcome comments on this idea.
I think that Kip is right in this case. Small government is great, but and EPA that actually focused on legitimate pollution threats and mitigation would be useful. Such studies could be focused and narrow, regarding specific releases, toxins and how to deal with them. That would be of value.
Most enforcement should be at state level (most sources are localized and may be specific to environmental and geological factors as well as the specific technologies that are responsible for the risk), but research on mitigation strategies and effectiveness of clean-ups could be valuable to all. That said, capture of agencies by interest groups and radicals is a constant threat.
Jay Lehr founded the EPA with the best intentions, but he says that the
EPA has done nothing useful since the early ’80s.
The TVA enabling act gave the TVA three objectives-flood control, electric power
generation, and recreation. They have gone far beyond their original mandate.
All government metastasizes. Stop the cancer.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/23/jay-h-lehr-beginning-end-epa/
If the EPA now has a gun to its head , it is because it went out an bought a gun , loaded it with bullets and taught someone who to shoot it . Then put the gun to its own head and said ‘ I dare you to tell me to pull the trigger ‘
Kip Hanson@ur momisugly 8:40 AM Kip, I believe that the misanthropes, Green nuts, Socialists,
and Globalists or their Useful idiots are one and the same.
Their goal is to stop capitalism, and establish a “one world government” under
the UN.
+1
The hard left fasc1sts of the media and academia are showing their totalitarian dna by resorting the the classic Soviet era tactic to discredit political opponents – diagnosing them as mentally ill.
Here they report a “petition” by psychiatrists to remove president Trump based on mental illness, inventing a new mental illness in the process:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38991171
The Russian author Irina Politkovskaya revealed in her book “Putin’s Russia” the return of “political psychiatry”, the practice of using the psychiatric profession to eliminate political opponents, being revived from Soviet times.
A Nuremburg trial is coming for these BBC/CNN/hard left academia fasc1sts.
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi
For President Trump it is clear his opponents are fighting him now. I predict the winning phase will begin within the next year or so. He can clearly see this progression as well, which is why he is so confident.
Thanks ptolemy2. Good to know BBC uses tax-payers hard earned cash for calling newly elected POTUS mentally ill. Right after Brexit. They must be experts of the sort.
I own a small business which is highly regulated by the EPA. We need to roll back regulation to at least 2000 if we are to survive much longer. Every week, the idiot ideologues in DC think of some way to kill our business with required testing, expensive studies (paying parasites who surround the EPA), and reports. We miss a report date and it’s a $42,500 fine for each unit sold in that quarter. That’s twice our selling price.
I wanted more engineers for product development and instead we had to hire a compliance officer. Insanity.
Help us Donald Trump, you are our only hope.
Put climate “science” and the EPA on trial. Here is the court case. This one should be open and shut. The fr@ud is monumental.
Climate “Science” on Trial; The Smoking Gun Files
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/climate-science-on-trial-the-smoking-gun-files/
Once again, co2islife, thank you so very much for the fantastic collection of work that destroys the “warmists” agenda. Very well done!!!
Can’t thank you enough for those comments.
“The new EPA abolition bill is at a very early stage, and has to cross a number of hurdles before making it to the desk of President Trump. But returning power and responsibility for clean air and water to the states, reducing federal interference in everyday affairs, is likely to be a very attractive proposition for ”
accepting the real world and find our place in.
And today, Friday:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SENATE_TRUMP_CABINET?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-02-17-13-36-14
A lot of commenters here don’t seem to realize that the vast majority of enforcement functions are already done by the state environmental agencies. Each state has written regulations and guidance for its citizens to be in compliance with federal laws – Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, RCRA, etc. Each state has its own permitting programs and cleanup criteria. Michigan’s criteria tables, for example, are much more restrictive and comprehensive than those in Illinois. I’ve been working in the environmental consulting industry for 16 years, and I’ve never interacted directly with the USEPA. I know they’ve had representatives involved in some of our projects, and the company occasionally contracts directly with one of the regions for specific jobs. However, air and water discharge permit applications and compliance reports go to the state agency, and it’s the state that approves remediation plans and decides if and when a site can be closed.
Mostly, the USEPA personnel write new regulations, do some research, distribute federal funds, and write periodic reports. They don’t need to be as large as they currently are to perform those functions. The federal laws won’t go away if the EPA is disbanded or reduced to an oversight committee. The states will still need to make sure their regulations and enforcement comply with those laws.